Now on ScienceBlogs: WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS!...And Clean Your Stuff
David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.)
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years. Oliver Sacks found Reef Madness "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant." Check it out.
If you'd like, you can subscribe to Neuron Culture by email. You might also want to see more of my work at my main website or check out my Tumblr log.
Category: PTSD
Dave Grossman's take on the psychic toll of killing (and almost being killed) among the most compelling.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:38 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Animals first. Then everybody else.
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:22 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
We can throw all the money we want at PTSD and continue to hire lots of therapists at the VA. But we won't get anywhere until we start asking why the PTSD problem takes such a unique course here in the U.S.
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:24 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: PTSD
Our current approach to post-combat distress is failing just as completely as the Rumsfled approach did. But in the halls that count, there's no sign a change in thinking.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:35 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Digital culture
In case you missed them (or miss them, and want to read again ...)
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:22 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Healthcare policy
I can only hope he'll as vigorously ask people such as Mitt Romney what exactly is wrong with offering more attractive insurance options to the almost 75 million people who are un- or under-insured.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:05 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Healthcare policy
At a time when we are much concerned with reducing PTSD in combat troops, it's valuable to learn that we could apparentlly cut the PTSD rate by more than 50% simply by keeping the least healthy 15% -- as measured by fairly simple health questionnaires we already have in any and -- out of combat zones. So why is this study going almost completely ignored?
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:00 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science policy
As the comments and correspondence about my PTSD story and posts accrue, I've been pondering ways to pull out some of the most interesting, powerful, and affecting. I finally decided to just start posting some, sometimes with commentary, sometimes without. This is a story of many different colors and textures.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:07 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Brains and minds
A new study of PTSD in US veterans of the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars suggests that you can identify the most vulnerable -- soldiers who stand 2 to 3 times the risk of their peers -- with fairly simple measures of mental and physical health -- and that just keeping them home would cut combat PTSD rates by half.
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:40 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: PTSD
Are these people claiming POW status just to get benefits? That's possible. But I suspect the motive is often stranger -- a weird attraction to falsifying elite and particularly trying military service.
Posted by David Dobbs at 1:26 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
